Keeping Peak Oil Reality In Mind # 7: A Snapshot

An observation worth noting … and pondering, from Tom Murphy:

We built this world on fossil fuels. It is distressing to realize that our primary fuels will begin an inexorable decline this century. The result is that we will have difficulty even maintaining our current energy expenditure rate—let alone continuing our historical 3% annual energy growth rate. A major adjustment is in the offing.  Economic growth, look out!
Yes, we can re-purpose other fossil fuels (coal, gas, heavy oil/tar) to help plug the gap in liquid fuels, meanwhile accelerating their depletion. We can use liquid fuels more efficiently. We can try every trick to tease more oil out of depleted wells. All these things will happen. Their collective effort will ease the pain (and bring on new hurts), but it is not clear whether all efforts in tandem can arrest the decline, given practical, political, end economic realities. They are all more expensive, all lower EROEI, all harder, and with the exception of efficiency improvements keep pumping CO2 into the atmosphere. Although the pain may be eased, the problem does not go away.

A fairly straightforward collection of facts, unpleasant though they may be. It’s the reality we’re going to be dealing with long before we’re even close to being fully-prepared unless we start getting leaders, media, and industry to tell everyone the truth (not just the preferred, “feels-good, sounds better” cherry-picked version). Then, we start planning and doing.

It doesn’t matter whether Peak Oil has arrived already, will do so “soon,” or might be several years into the future. Adapting … well, everything to a world no longer powered by plentiful, accessible, and affordable supplies of fossil fuels always at the ready is an almost incomprehensible undertaking, and there will be nothing quick or easy about any of it.

Waiting for the Technology Fairy to save us remains a strategy … it’s just one that gets worse every day that we don’t start recognizing some common-sense realities and start doing something about them.

Crisis … or opportunity?

Peak Oil Matters